Juxtapositions

Museum exhibitions - and the catalogs and books that accompany them - have come more and more to argue points of view rather than merely display works of art. This is an altogether appropriate innovation, for in the adroit juxtaposition of art on museums walls or in a book's pages, new light, fresh insights, and theretofore unsuspected meanings may be revealed.

A fall exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City organized by curator Kynaston McShine '58 set up a group of the most provocative juxtapositions of recent times, a generous selection of 19th-century American Romantic landscapes against a squad of mid-20th-century Abstract Expressionist canvasses. The argument of the show is carried on more extensively -and more persuasively - in the pages of a handsome book/catalog published by the museum. In these pages, Dartmouth Professor John Wilmerding, Robert Rosenblum, Barbara Novak, and McShine amplify the discussions available to the museum-goer only as blown-up poster captions on the exhibition room walls.

In this show, in particular, an amplified discussion is needed because of the difficulty in seeing connections between such apparently disparate works, for example, as Thomas Cole's "Landscape with Tree Trunks" (1825) and Barnett Newman's red-on-red painting "One-merit I" (1948). Unfortunately, the lack of color illustrations in the book, only 16 of 185, forces too much reliance on the authors' words, the intellectual component of the book, rather than permitting the reader to see and feel the potency of the comparatives.

In fact, there are all too few strong visual comparisons in the show and book, and the end result is a flawed argument that relies on a loose interpretation of the goals of the artists rather than their concrete achievements. The authors seek to draw parallels between the qualities of luminosity of color, the sense of large space, and intimations of the ideal or sublime. Indeed, some of these qualities do seem to connect some works in the collection. And the artists' own awareness of these qualities in nature as well as in their work is further enhanced in the book by two delightful anthologies of statements about art assembled by Novak and McShine. (They are among the most interesting things in the book.)

But, finally, in looking at the works themselves one senses that the connections being drawn between these 19th-century technicolor spectacles and their slap-dash 20th-century cousins are all too tenuous and the argument therefore specious. In addition, the exclusion of such key Abstract Expressionist painters as de Kooning, Kline, and Guston - with neither mention nor explanation - must lead the viewer/reader to conclude that the deck has been somehow stacked. With the 19th-century painters represented so well - Cole, Durand, Moran, Church, Bierstadt, Allston, Heade, Johnson, Ryder, Homer and others - the absence of a broader range of abstract artists is inexplicable, especially in the halls of the Museum of Modern Art. There, the small-scale, realistic earlier works seemed somehow uncomfortable though nearly anywhere they are welcome to look at.

In the end, although the exhibition is more satisfying than the book and the argument on which both are based seems thin, the effort was well worth making. Curator McShine shows courage in taking a difficult position to promote new awarenesses and understandings of modern art; Wilmerding and Rosenblum reveal their fluent and articulate verbal styles, and Novak contributes an erudite, well introduced selection of writings. A fascinating "Chronicle" of art in American life compiled by Mary Davis lends special value to the book. For those who missed the show, the book will serve as a presentation of the ideas, if not the visual experience; for those who saw the paintings, it may act as a persuasive memory aid to mull over on a long winter's evening.

THE NATURAL PARADISE:PAINTING IN AMERICA 1800-1950Edited by Kynaston McShine '58Professor John Wilmerding, contributorMuseum of Modern Art, 1976180 pp. Cloth, $19.95; paper $7.95

Robert Morton '55 is vice president, editor-in-chief of Harry N. Abrams, Inc., art bookpublishers and the author of the recentlypublished Southern Antiques and Folk Art.